You will never know if you don't walk with them, sometimes for many many miles. To give proper help, if proper help is what we want to give, we must learn where the problem comes from.
Both my grandfathers lived through the Great Depression. One of them always ate the thing he liked the best first. I asked him why once, and he said because you never knew whether someone would take it away, so it was best to enjoy things when you had them. He was not a poor man, but he was never wealthy, either.
The behavior you describe as "short-term thinking" is very like my grandfather's approach to dinner: a reactive kind of behavior based on privation. If you have something, better use it now before someone takes it from you. Once again, it boils down to trust.
They may never learn better ways of living, anyway, but without an example and support, the bad outcome is guaranteed.
"If a man would have you walk a mile with him, walk with him another, and if he would take your coat, give him your cloak also."
We almost never know why a person has such a wound. If we blow it off as beyond our responsibility, we fail Compassion 101.
Off Topic » in reply to A Significant Fraction & Maybe A Majority But Not An Overwhelming One
But why are they self-destructive?
The whole thread (42 posts)
- Poverty in England
- Well, I read it and now I have a headache
- Welfare cultures
- Your ideologically driven thread
- If you fix a problem, what happens to a bureaucracy whose life depends on the existence of that problem?
- Circular Logic
- Welfare cultures
- Dubyuh will show a thing or two to those commie ingrates (n/t)
- Well, I read it and now I have a headache